Heist gone wrong is sure to steal cult status

Published on Thursday 31 January 2008 19:02

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (15) ****

DIRECTED BY: SIDNEY LUMET

STARRING: ALBERT FINNEY, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, ETHAN HAWKE

JUST when you thought the heist– gone-wrong thriller was all played out, along comes 83-year-old Dog Day Afternoon veteran Sidney Lumet to give it an adrenaline shot to the heart with this bleak, brilliant and brutal tale of unlikely brothers who decide to rip off a mom-and-pop jewellery store with tragic results. Ethan Hawke and the ubiquitous Philip Seymour Hoffman play the equally loathsome siblings who decide to solve crippling money worries with a spot of armed robbery, despite having zero experience. The reason they think they can pull it off is the first twist in the tight-as-a-drum plot – and something that sets up the film's successful attempt to explore deeper themes of poisonous family dysfunction. More details risk ruining it, but it does kick off in extraordinary style with the botched robbery, then flashes back and forth to the before-and-after, filling in the details of the heist and the crime-doesn't-pay consequences in satisfyingly rich ways. With a cast at the top of their game and a cracking script by first-timer Kelly Masterson, Lumet has directed a film with the kind of lean, mean, palm-sweating efficiency that makes him such a vital cinematic force to begin with. Classic status surely beckons for this movie.

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE (15) ***

DIRECTED: SUSANNE BIER

STARRING: BENICIO DEL TORO, HALLE BERRY, DAVID DUCHOVNY

FEW filmmakers get as up-close and personal with their actors as Susanne Bier, the Danish director of After the Wedding, who proved there was more to Dogme than stripped-down aesthetic trickery. For her first American picture she works wonders with Benicio Del Toro and Halle Berry, right, both of whom make it impossible to look away, even when the script skirts close to clichs you'd expect in an earnest recovery drama about grief and addiction.

Berry plays Audrey, a bereaved wife and mother whose shock upon losing her husband (a fleeting turn from David Duchovny) sees her offering his junkie best friend Jerry (Del Toro) a chance to get back on his feet now that he's lost the one person who refused to give up on him. Moving into her renovated garage, he soon becomes something of a surrogate father to Audrey's two children, though his burgeoning bond with their mother proves much more complicated as grief-fuelled feelings of loss, attraction, anger and guilt swirl around Audrey's head.

Bier fractures the narrative to replicate Audrey's emotional state and, though the film is sometimes frustratingly sentimental, Del Toro's soulful presence makes it easy enough to accept the good in it.

HOTEL HARABATI ***

DIRECTED BY: BRICE CAUVIN

STARRING: LAURENT LUCAS, HL NE FILLI RES, ANOUK AIME

THERE'S been a small wave of bizarre French films of late, movies that mix everyday situations with strange metaphysical conceits to create stories that are beguiling, if occasionally too loopy for their own good. Dominik Moll's Lemming is the best example and it's that film that springs to mind watching Hotel Harabati, partly because it also stars Laurent Lucas, but mainly because for most of its running time it's hypnotic and intriguing. However, it eventually descends into the bafflingly and unsatisfactorily abstract. Lucas plays Philippe, an architect whose life with his wife Marion takes a strange turn after they pilfer an abandoned bag of cash en route to a holiday in Venice. Increasingly paranoid, a series of weird, unsettling events causes them to gradually regress from their adult responsibilities until… well, that's where the film leaves you uncertain about what on Earth is going on. Director Brice Cauvin seems to be trying to tap into fears about security and identity but, while he creates a palpable sense of dread, there comes a point when the film's inscrutability starts feeling self-indulgent.

&149 Selected release: Filmhouse, Edinburgh and Glasgow Film Theatre, 2-5 February; DCA, 10-16 February